Kevin Fertig Talks About The Differences Between NXT And OVW

In an interview with The Two Man Power Trip of Wrestling Podcast, Kevin Fertig spoke about the differences between OVW and NXT, as well as being told about the relaunch of ECW. Here are highlights:

On the differences between OVW and NXT: “When I was in the gym I was watching some NXT, I was watching Baron Corbin. It’s crazy because I started at Power Pro which was kind of like USWA and so many guys came through there and I remember the rings from the Power Pro days and the USWA days that the rings were basically about to fall apart. They were water-hose and wire and went up and down the roads. Granted we did have live TV on Memphis Channel 5 which is to this day is one of the greatest wrestling television programs for ratings ever. When I got into Ohio Valley Wrestling, Jim Cornette tried to use Ohio Valley Wrestling as a way to put talents in Royal Rumbles and different ways to bring the championship up and it was always kyboshed. Cornette always had the mind for that if the developmental talent are stronger stars now, then they are only going to be stronger stars when they get up to the WWE. To me that’s a huge thing. That’s something to Hunter’s credit he is trying to do. These guys are already on video games and here it is, they haven’t even done anything yet for WWE and they are on the new video games and talking about action figures, they’ve got t-shirt sales now. They are already stars coming out of the gate. Hell, their Twitter followers are in upwards of 40,000 which unheard of but they are known.”

On the ECW relaunch and playing Kevin Thorn: “At the time Tommy Dreamer was with Talent Relations and I had just been signed back and he was talking about they were going to redo ECW. But the problem was it’s going to be on SyFy and SyFy wants Zombies, Aliens and all this other sh*t. About a year prior to that they were talking about bringing me, Gangrel and Shelly (Martinez) as being a vampire tag team. Tommy asked if I still had the vampire gear that I had bought and said that I was going to need it. He said they want you to be a vampire and at that time just getting signed back and not having a place on the roster, I didn’t care what they wanted to make me at that point. I would have done whatever. The vampire thing was something that was always cool and something that I really enjoyed. But Gangrel probably did it the best out of anybody back in his days with Luna, but you can never go wrong being a vampire.”

On his relationship with Shelly Martinez: “Now it’s great, then it was different, a little bit of different agendas at the time but when we finally started getting it going the rug got pulled out from underneath us. Look wise, she’s incredible. Good looking girl, had a different look, she’s not your average Barbie-blonde “diva”. I would associate her to like Paige now in the way she looks. I think the Diva division now has become Barbie-cut-outs for the most part, within reason.”